By this stage, you will have seen plenty of artists' impressions of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Now, you can hear one.

One of the distinguishing features of SARS-CoV-2 is the crown, or corona, of spikes on its surface. Zoom in to those infinitesimal spikes further and they're made up of chains of proteins, looping and folding over one another.

In an attempt to understand this new pathogen better, musician and engineer Markus Buehler and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have assigned each protein and structural form a musical equivalent.

The result, generated by artificial intelligence, is a surprisingly soothing musical score that Professor Buehler said revealed detail that microscopes couldn't.
External Link: Soundcloud coronavirus spike protein as a music score

"Our brains are great at processing sound. In one sweep, our ears pick up all of its hierarchical features: pitch, timbre, volume, melody, rhythm, and chords," he said.

"We would need a high-powered microscope to see the equivalent detail in an image, and we could never see it all at once.

"Sound is such an elegant way to access the information stored in a protein."

The SARS-CoV-2 virus spike is a particularly complex assembly — it involves three protein chains folded together in an intricate pattern.

The volume, duration and rhythm of notes in the score reflect how the amino acids that make up the proteins are arranged, and the entangled chains are rendered as intersecting melodies.

"These structures are too small for the eye to see, but they can be heard," Professor Buehler said.